Twitter is Moving Beyond the Trademark 140 Character Limit
Twitter is finally moving past the 140-character limit that has long been the company’s trademark. Twitter recently announced that it is working on a product that will allow users to share long tweets that exceed 140 characters.
Over the past few months, the company has been loosening its 140-character rule. In April, Twitter added a ‘retweet with comment’ option to give more room to comment on tweets they share. The company also did away with the 140-character rule back in June.
As of now it is unclear what this new product will look like or how it will work. There are existing apps such as OneShot that allows you to post images of texts, or TwitLonger, which directs users to a website to read a full tweet. But it looks like Twitter is working on one that will solve the problem within the app itself.
Twitter is also looking at ways to remove links and user handles from the count so that frees up more characters.
In addition to the long-form product, execs have been openly discussing the idea of tweaking how Twitter measures its 140-character limit by removing things like links and user handles from the count, multiple sources say. In the past, Twitter has tinkered with the limit in other ways. Twitter Cards are still beholden to the 140-character limit but are intended to help people (and advertisers) share lots of information, and Twitter added a “retweet with comment” option in April to give people more room to comment on tweets they share.
Users have, for a long time, criticized Twitter on character restriction. And for many years Twitter has paid no heed to the hate, but it finally looks like the company is ready to make some sacrifices for the greater good.
